When we have a tree, it’s usually decorated with white, pink, or blue, ornaments, and then covered with lights and ribbons, but one year, my favorite year, we hung homemade gingerbread men from every branch. The treats weighed down the limbs so much that one night Mrs. Wiggins ate most of them. Mom was the first one to step in her barf the next morning.
Lauren and I suggest peanut butter sandwiches for Christmas dinner but Mom digs behind the pots and pans for a jar of loose change she hands to Dad. “Fifty bucks, last time I counted,” she says. “Get whatever the girls want,” she tells him, and even though she’s expecting Chinese food or pizza, Mom’s pleased when we return with Swedish meatballs and hot cheese puffs from Rose’s Deli; cream soda, popcorn balls, pickles, and Fig Newtons from the store down the street.
She’s sitting cross-legged on the kitchen floor, her back against the wall—her sketchpad of neighborhood scenes open in her lap. She tries to get up but falls back. She laughs at herself and my sister glares. “I’m sorry, Lima Bean. I just lost my balance.”
But there are tears in Lauren’s eyes—angry tears with little fires inside, if you look close enough. Lauren’s not allowed to say drunk, just like she isn’t allowed to call me a weirdo.
After a nap, Mom steps outside for a cigarette.
While she smokes, Dad plays Al Hirt and Ann-Margret—singing “Baby, It’s Cold Outside”—and I wonder if Mom told him that she’d given up the contest prize. “There aren’t enough hours in the day to be a full-time housewife and an artist,” she explained to me.
What about enough hours in the day to be a housewife, an artist, and a drunk?
I’m mad when she steps back inside the house, smelling of smoke, kicks off her shoes, and hurries into Dad’s waiting arms. She stands on his feet while they dance, the same way Lauren and I used to before Dad decided we were too old.
Mom doesn’t notice that I cleaned the kitchen while she napped, or that I sharpened her favorite pencils and arranged her tubes of paint just like in the color wheel. When Mom doesn’t see what’s right in front of her, it’s called being near-sighted or myopic.
I looked it up.
I hate them for arguing.
I hate them for making up.
I hate how no one exists except the two of them.
Out my bedroom window it’s a normal Christmas. The Fosters put up more lights this year than usual, and their big plastic Santa with the chipped nose still stands in their front yard waving. Its motor got too hot last Christmas and sparked a small fire at the outlet in their garage that Sherman said smelled “like reindeer farts.”
“Girls?” It’s time for board games, hot chocolate, and snacks. I bring a clipboard to the table, but no one notices until I ask how to spell inebriated. Mr. Alsup, my science teacher, says that to understand something you must observe it carefully, take lots of notes, and record your findings in charts, graphs, and illustrations.
Dad loves Monopoly. I hate how boys always win at games, and make a note of it on my parents’ chart.
Lauren knocks the clipboard from my hands. “Stop writing everything down! Jeez!”
“Hold on, Lima Bean,” Dad says, then puts another house on an already crowded property and lifts his cocoa mug in a toast. “To the richest guy on the boardwalk!” Everyone moans. “All right then,” he says, looking at Mom. “To winning another art contest!”
“Yippee!” we cry. Mom holds her cup highest.
“We don’t have any money this Christmas so you know what I want for next year?” Lauren says.
“A pala-mino!” we all sing. Lauren’s shoulders drop like they do when she faces the living room each Christmas morning and doesn’t find a horse tethered to the tree. Or tears through her stocking and doesn’t find a picture of one with a note that says it’s being boarded for her at Horse Heaven Stables (only 1.4 miles away; there’s a map on the fridge).
Then Mom announces she’s pregnant.
She’s pregnant!
That night I put penny candies on my parents’ pillows, the way they do in fancy New York City hotels.
* * *
Two months later, Mom loses the baby.
Five months after that, she loses another one.
Frieda says Mom’s lucky to be young and strong enough to keep trying, but I don’t see what’s so lucky about miscarriages.
Each time Dad tells Mom, “It’ll come to term this time, sweetheart.”
I’m never having a child. If I am a weirdo and it’s in the genes, I could give it to my kids. Bad stuff happens. You can’t stop it either—just like the real people couldn’t stop the pod people in Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
Dad is at a convention the night Mom agrees to watch Body Snatchers with me. She dozes off and on during the movie but at the end she sits up, wide awake, and says, “Aren’t we lucky we don’t live in a world like that?”
“But maybe we do,” I say. “Maybe Frieda’s a pod person, a body snatcher, and the real Frieda’s in her basement, not in Florida. How would we know?”
Mom smiles. “Frieda doesn’t have a basement.”
“But if pod people have our faces and memories, and nobody believes the real people . . .”
Mom wishes she’d never agreed to watch the movie with me no matter what that magazine article said about “mothers spending quality, individual time with each child, doing something that the child enjoys.” She looks at her watch and announces that it’s five minutes to midnight.
“They take your soul—”
“I’m sorry, Lily, but can we talk about souls another time? I’m really, really tired.” She flips off the TV and lamp.
“Like dead tired?” I ask. Po fell asleep one day and never woke up, maybe Mom will too.
She doesn’t answer. I hear her straighten the coffee table, and plump the scatter pillows. Mom has excellent night vision because she eats her carrots.
* * *
By March, most of the repo’d furniture is home again.
That spring, Dad makes chili dogs each Wednesday night so Mom can paint until bedtime. While she sleeps in the next morning, he makes us breakfast and gets us ready for school. Mom calls each Wednesday “getting away,” and paints Lauren and me little pictures of Chinese pagodas, palm trees, and castles that she slips under our bedroom doors while we’re at school.
For a while, Dad listens when Mom tells him that “art has power” and “if more people had painted pictures, written stories, or played music, there’d never have been a Holocaust.” She cries each time she says it.
Dad’s hand heals, and then one day I see him standing in the garage again, looking at it under the lamp.
I guess the automatic garage door is working now, because it’s up.
And anyone can see in.
Chapter 15
Jars
Three houses away, Sherman’s mom washes her car. A trickle of cold, soapy water kisses my feet on its way to the sewer grate in front of our house. I wore socks and shoes to the mailbox, then took them off.
Mom—who’s planting primroses and begonias on the side of the house, and can’t see me—won’t like it. I’ve been sick four days and she doesn’t know I’m out.
The mail arrives: a bill from Pacific Gas and Electric, Mom’s Harper’s Bazaar, Dad’s Sports Illustrated. Nothing for Lauren or me though I did receive a Get well card from Frieda yesterday. A Jesus Get well card. Half the glitter, on the flowers at His feet, was stuck to the envelope, but the message was legible: I will never leave you nor forsake you. Hebrews 13:5.
You don’t want to give men “big heads,” so I didn’t tell SOG about it when He sat beside me on the patio this morning.
“Your parents are pretty groovy, sleeping outside with you last night,” He said. We both enjoyed watching the sun rising over the roof of my house. Like Kilroy peeking over a fence—all big nose and fat cartoon fingers, the way bossy Louise Lamb taught me to draw him at church camp last summer. Maybe there’s only a top to Kilroy and no bott
om, like the legless beggar boy on Burnside who uses his knuckles to push his cart around. Bossy Louise is Judy’s age. “I’m coming back as assistant counselor next summer,” she bragged, “and you’ll have to do everything I say.” But I won’t, because I’m not going back to Lake Little Jehovah. After making a leather bookmark in crafts one afternoon, I found Jesus sitting in the rose arbor and He told me church camp was silly. And, “Louise Lamb?” He laughed. “Come on, Lily. You’re smarter than she is.” It’s hard to be mad at SOG when He says stuff like that.
“Looks like a beautiful day,” Jesus said this morning, standing up and popping His knuckles. Mom takes fifty cents off our allowance when we do that, a dollar if we “give her lip” about it.
I looked around. My parents were up, their chaise longues empty, the screen door open to the kitchen, the friendly drumming of the percolator, and the two of them quietly talking. My occasional fevers are a mystery to my parents; they’ll try anything.
“Feeling better?” SOG asked. “Did you sleep?”
“Yes,” to the first question. Cool night air and moonlight was good medicine; the fever broke, I can feel it. “No,” to the second.
I didn’t sleep. Mom checked on me every hour with the flashlight, while Dad crept around the backyard (like Vic Morrow in Combat) whenever he heard an unfamiliar sound. Which meant he was up a lot. You’d be surprised how much noise there is in a quiet night. Besides sleeping outside for my fever—something Mom swore she’d done when she was a girl in Romania—Sleeping under a full moon was the last wish on my Christmas list. Frieda warned against it but they kinda had to do it. Besides, they don’t worry about me going crazy since I howl at the moon already.
And jellyfish tides are 68.7 miles away.
* * *
As I sit with my feet in the gutter, I concentrate on the soap bubbles sliding over my toes. I concentrate on “be here now,” which Jamie said would bring me “inner peace.” She said, “Don’t worry about what happens next.” Of course, Jamie is dead and none of that matters now. She waves goodbye at me from each of the tiny soapy windows.
Mrs. White drives by and honks. School’s out and she’s off to pick up her youngest, first grader Jack. She’s left at 3:20 each day this week.
Suddenly, Judy’s front door flies open with a bang, then slams shut again.
“You got her, Rusty?” Mrs. Marks yells, hurrying to the car. Hair in rollers, car keys jingling. “You got her?”
“I got her,” Rusty answers. He walks quickly but stiffly, carrying a cardboard box in his arms. It must be heavy. Dad always teases him about hitting the gym.
“Judy!” Mrs. Marks yells. “Get the door for your brother!” They’re both home from school? When I finally see my old friend, silently rushing to open the back door of the car, I stand up. Something is wrong.
She puts the box in the backseat and Rusty jumps in. “The street! The street!” Mrs. Marks shouts over the sound of the engine, but Judy’s already standing at the end of the driveway, looking both ways, waving her mother out. Connie Marks’s biggest fear is running over somebody, or hitting the big maple tree she can’t see around.
A car window must be open; Rusty’s crying. He never cries, even when Mr. Marks takes a belt to him.
“What is it?” I call to Judy. She doesn’t answer. “Judy?” I haven’t seen her in months. She looks different. Older.
“Fifi’s sick,” she calls back. “She won’t get up! We’re taking her to the vet!”
The car stops beside her and she jumps in the front seat next to her mom.
Four years ago, Judy and I took an oath to always be friends no matter what. “I’m coming too!” I grab my shoes and socks and run toward them.
“Lily!” Mom yells. “No! You’ve been sick!”
Without asking, I throw open the back door and jump into Mrs. Marks’s car. No one reacts. The car is quiet and everyone is numb as Mrs. Marks pulls away. Behind us, Mom stands in the middle of the street, one hand on her hip, the other shielding her eyes.
The car smells odd. Like Fifi’s usual poodle farts only worse.
Between Rusty and me is the cardboard box; Fifi lies inside it on a bath towel. She blinks her eyes slowly. One of her ears is folded back and there’s blood in its soft pink shell. Her mouth is open, her tongue limp, and more blood is caked around her nostrils and eyes.
“She’s bleeding all over,” Rusty says.
“She’ll be okay,” I say softly.
Judy jerks around. “You don’t know if she’ll be okay, Lily. Maybe she’ll die.”
“Judy!” Mrs. Marks snaps.
Fifi delivered Caesar’s pups without difficulty; what is it now? “Is she . . . pregnant again?” I ask.
“Only if the vet’s a quack,” Mrs. Marks answers. “We had her fixed months ago.”
Ten minutes later, the Markses hurry inside the Multnomah Vet Clinic with Fifi, leaving the car doors standing open. I close them and run in after them.
The waiting room is a sad place. A chubby girl leans on her mother’s shoulder, her plump Kilroy fingers gripping the empty birdcage in her lap. Trembling cats and dogs wrapped in bath towels, or whimpering under the chairs of their owners, are everywhere. An old man, with a leash draped over his crossed legs, blows smoke rings over people’s heads.
A little girl peeks inside the round hatbox she holds on her lap. “Mabel’s my turtle,” she tells me.
While Doris Day sings “Que Sera, Sera” on the office radio, the door to a brightly lit room opens slowly on the waiting room. Inside, Fifi’s cardboard box sits on top of a steel bed, and the Markses stand around it, talking to a man in a white coat. When Judy throws her hand over her mouth, my heart sinks. I hurry to the door just as the doctor closes it.
“Wait!” I say. “I’m her friend!” But I’m not anymore, and when I tiptoe down the hall, the next door’s locked too. “Judy?” I call, but she doesn’t answer.
A cat does, though, meowing over and over. I hear voices in rooms around me. A toilet flushes. Across the hall is the Staff Restroom; another closed door marked Kennels; and an empty air-conditioned science lab with microscopes and cupboards, and shelves that hold jars of . . . I sneak inside for a better look . . .
Dog Embryos.
My heart does a backflip.
Each jar’s fetus is bigger than the last, with more detail of dogs’ heads, their bodies, legs, tails. One jar is labeled 2 Weeks, another 3 Weeks, until the fetus is 5 Weeks and so big I can’t imagine how it got in the jar.
I’m reminded of the photos in Sherman’s Police Gazette: a murderer’s basement refrigerator with “human remains” in jars. Ball was written on the jar. Judy says ball means having sex.
I feel sick. Even more sick when I hear my best friend cry.
An unseen adult comforts her.
What should I do? Judy doesn’t like me anymore, and no one asked me to come along.
I freeze in place until another shelf of glass jars wink at me. The shelf is labeled Dog Hearts and I stand on my tiptoes, stretching across the clean empty linoleum counter for a better look at the different-sized jars.
Ruben. Two-yr.-old Chihuahua, reads one. Pokie. 5-yr.-old Collie, reads another. Thin white shoelaces, like onion strings, run in and out of each heart. There are so many shoelaces in Frank. 7-yr.-old Lab mix, it’s hard to see anything else.
And then I see Princess Grace. 8-yr.-old St. Bernard. Her heart is biggest of all. A single fat shoelace weaves through it. Mrs. Wiggins was a St. Bernard. I’m shaking when I wrap my hand around the jar, feeling its cool pulsing through the glass.
“Heart worms,” a young male voice suddenly announces, and, surprised, I scramble back, taking the jar with me. It crashes before I do, spilling stinky formaldehyde and shooting pieces of glass all over the room.
“Shit!” the teenage lab assistant cries. Not much older than me, he looks confused, then offers a hand up. “You okay? You’re not supposed to be in here, you know.” Mrs. Wiggins’s heart li
es at my feet, pulsing and reddening in front of me; its white worm, as thick as a pencil, circling through the dark wet tunnels.
I reach down to pick it up, but the pimply faced boy grabs my arm.
“No way,” he says. “You cut yourself and I get fired.” A nurse appears in the lab doorway, and in the hallway behind her, Mrs. Marks, Judy, and Rusty gesture for me to join them.
“Lily,” Mrs. Marks says quietly, “it’s time to go.”
I stare at the heart.
The nurse adds, “Your family’s going home, sweetheart.”
“They’re not my family,” I say, and while the Markses shuffle off, walking like sobbing robots through the waiting room to their car, I stare at the boy who picks up the sacred heart and sets it in a metal pan on the counter. A glowing ring, like one of Saturn’s, circles the exact place where it fell on the floor. Some religious people crawl on their knees for hundreds of miles to visit something like this. The least I can do is stand here, right here, for . . . I look at my wristwatch.
“I’ll wait for my mom,” I tell the nurse when she sticks her head in the room again. I give her our number. After eighteen minutes she returns, telling me she hasn’t reached Mom yet. “Why don’t you sit in the other room until she gets here?”
I can’t move.
Doors open and close. Phones ring, metal cages clatter, and people cry or stomp out of the office. The desk clerk says, “Have a nice weekend,” nineteen times. Are there nineteen employees? A chubby woman enters the science lab, stops to stare at me, then smears something on a slide, sticks it under a microscope, and makes a note in a folder before she leaves. The teenage lab assistant leads five whimpering, panting dogs down the hall to the kennel. Voices discuss “surgery on the Johnson terrier,” but “nobody expects poor Einstein to make it.” Someone named Sandy goes outside for a cigarette, and Joe says, “It’s raining like hell, ” though I can’t hear the rain over the fan. People talk to me at first, then finally give up and walk around me.
The Shark Curtain Page 19
